Amazon's $50 Fire TV Stick Basic Edition Launches Worldwide

Amazon on Tuesday announced the Fire TV Stick Basic Edition, a streamlined and more affordable variant of its plug-and-play streaming gadget. The product is priced at $50 and will start shipping to more than 100 countries tomorrow, the company said. The global audience targeted by the Fire TV Stick Basic Edition will be able to choose between English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese as their default system language, with the device also being eligible for Prime-related benefits and compatible with Amazon's services like Prime Video. Brazil and Mexico aren't among the countries that are set to receive the new gadget tomorrow but the streaming stick will hit both of these markets in the near future, presumably by early 2018.

The Fire TV Stick Basic Edition is equipped with 8GB of internal flash memory and features a MediaTek-made quad-core processor clocked at 1.3GHz backed by the Mali450 MP4 GPU, as well as 1GB of RAM. The gadget supports 1080p video streaming and Dolby Audio 5.1, in addition to being compatible with HEVC codecs. Apart from a slight downgrade in specs compared to the more full-fledged stick, Amazon's new offering also ships without support for the company's artificial intelligence assistant Alexa. The Seattle, Washington-based tech giant described the release of the Fire TV Stick Basic Edition as the latest step in its global video push which started with the worldwide launch of Prime Video just under a year ago. By presenting users with an affordable device capable of streaming FHD content, Amazon is hoping to continue growing its online video platform. Besides Fire TV devices, Prime Video is also available on smartphones, tablets, Android TV, and a range of other smart TV platforms including Samsung's Tizen.

The Fire TV Stick Basic Edition comes bundled with a streamlined remote controller and is compatible with 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1. The device requires almost no setup save for plugging it into a TV and logging into your Amazon account, thus being suitable for first-time streamers, Amazon suggested. Refer to the banner below to order the newly announced stick and find out more technical details about Amazon's latest gadget.

Dominik started at AndroidHeadlines in 2016 and is the Head Editor of the site today. He’s approaching his first full decade in the media industry, with his background being primarily in technology, gaming, and entertainment. These days, his focus is more on the political side of the tech game, as well as data privacy issues, with him looking at both of those through the prism of Android. Contact him at [email protected]